Chapter 18 — Summer After the Rain

Linh's mother returned by the afternoon bus, carrying a small suitcase and a potted plant whose name no one knew, its green leaves trembling with every step she took when she got off the bus. She stood in front of the theater for a long time, looking up at the faded sign as if recalling an ancient memory. Linh stood inside, not running out to hug her, her hand gripping the edge of the ticket counter until it turned white. The two looked at each other through the ticket office window, a few meters apart but it seemed like a long journey of eighteen years.

Minh passed by and told Linh's mother that the theater had a discount program for people who had run away from home. Linh threw him the ticket roll, a little more forcefully than she intended. Her mother laughed, a light laugh that broke the tense atmosphere, and the tension eased a little.

Mom said she lived in many cities, worked as an accountant and then sold food, and moved constantly as a way to escape from herself. She didn't come back because she was afraid of Linh asking, afraid of questions that she didn't have good enough answers for. When her father died, she realized that hiding was also a form of lying, a painful truth that she only dared to admit when it was too late to make amends with her deceased husband.

Linh asked his father if he could have saved the whole town. Mom replied that he tried, but he couldn't do it alone. He wanted to bring evidence out, but his records were kept, and he was blocked at every route he tried. Mother gave Linh a blue notebook with frayed edges, saying she got it from her father's room before leaving.

In the notebook is a list of the fathers Linh plans to meet and a line: "Wait until Linh is old enough to choose whether to listen or not." Linh was angry at him because even after he passed away, he still let her wait, as if that waiting was part of the legacy he deliberately left behind.

Mom said dad was afraid that if he told her too soon, Linh would live with hatred. Linh replied that she had lived by absence, and no one had ever asked her which one she wanted to choose between the two.

The mother and daughter could not resolve everything in the evening. They ate together as a group, the sound of bowls and chopsticks clanking echoed in the small kitchen, and Linh's mother criticized the sour and salty soup. Minh said that is the theater's tradition. Mrs. Nam said that tradition should be canceled, making the whole table laugh.

After dinner, Linh's mother met Minh privately on the porch. She thanked him for being by her side all these days. Minh said he stayed by his side because Linh paid him by forcing him to fix everything in the theater. Linh said he hadn't received any money yet, making her mother laugh again.

Linh's mother looked at the two of them, smiled a sincere smile, her eyes were somewhat lighter than when she first returned. The next morning, she will tell the group about the night of the flood.

That afternoon, an envelope was sent to the theater, hastily postmarked. Inside is a notice asking Linh to dismantle the entire repair part because "the project has not been appraised". Mai read it carefully and said the document was real, but the time limit was only two days, which was unusually and suspiciously short. If they stop operating, Phuc will have an excuse to say the theater is not qualified.

Linh wanted to immediately post the film online to protest. Mai stopped her, her hand placed on Linh's arm.

"Once posted, people will cut seconds into their stories. We need to protect witnesses before making noise."

The first witness they came to was Mr. Kien, a former dike engineer. He lives alone in a house overlooking the salt fields, with broken clocks hanging on the wall like a strange collection of stopped time. He confirmed that the water level warning system had been turned off before the flood. His voice was monotone but his hands kept shaking, and he did not dare to sign the minutes because at that time his daughter was working for the South Bank.

“Where is your daughter now?” Linh asked.

"It's across the sea. It doesn't want to remind An Binh."

He gave them a water measurement book, the paper had become yellow over the years. The numbers were corrected with a pencil, but the original pen strokes were still visible under the hastily erased layer. Mai took a photo of each page and asked for a signature to confirm. Mr. Kien's hands shook as he signed, saying perhaps he had waited too long to do what should have been done many years ago.

On the way home, Linh's car had a punctured tire in the middle of a deserted road. Minh bent down to remove the cake, his hands were stained with grease, while she sat on the side of the road calling other witnesses. A boy passed by and asked if he repaired the car or the theater. Minh replied that his current job is to fix everything that has wheels. The boy pointed at the wheel and asked why he didn't fix the adult problems too. Minh said he was learning a trade, an answer that made Linh laugh amid her fatigue.

That night, Hau discovered that the fund account was illegally logged in from a strange IP address. No money is lost, but the list of contributors is copied out. Mai requested to change the password, save the access log and notify the bank that night. Linh panicked because she knew someone was watching them more closely than she thought.

Her mother placed her hand on her child's shoulder, her warm hand passing through the thin shirt. “Don't let them turn your trust into distrust.”

Linh doesn't know what to do. She only knew that from the day she returned, each person who helped her had to pay a certain price, no matter how small or big. She made a list of things she could control: protecting records, keeping the theater safe, not speaking for witnesses, and not letting Minh climb onto the roof alone.

Minh read the list and asked why the last item was written in the largest letters. Linh said because he is the most difficult person to manage. He laughed, but this time he obeyed, nodding and accepting without arguing as usual.

Mr. Kien called after the group left, his voice seemed hurried. He remembered one more detail: on the night of the flood, someone removed the warning sign from the warehouse door. He couldn't see his face clearly, but he remembered the sound of shoes dragging on the cement floor, a sound that had haunted him for many years and only now dared to talk about it. Tan said that detail could help determine the time, if compared with the duty log.

Linh asked him if he wanted to record. He said that this time he would read the testimony himself, without needing anyone to write it for him. His voice trembled, but each word was clear, like a person trying to escape the burden that had weighed on him for eighteen years. After signing, he asked Linh to send a copy to his daughter abroad. I want you to know that I finally spoke, no matter how late.

After hearing this, Linh's mother said that people often think that being brave means not being afraid. Actually, courage is being afraid but still putting pen to paper, a saying that Linh recorded in her mind as a lesson for herself.

Mr. Kien's testimony was numbered and sent immediately to Mai. Tan rechecked the hour markers on the hydrographic map, discovering a seven-minute gap between the two logs. Linh does not fill that gap by guessing. She circled it in red and wrote "unverified" in decisive handwriting. Minh said it was the most annoying, but also the most honest, blank box in the entire file.

They placed the documents on a separate shelf, carefully labeling them as "needs comparison". Linh's mother said a room full of question marks is better than a room full of fake answers. Linh wrote that sentence next to the seven-minute space, as a reminder that the truth sometimes takes more time than people want.

Before leaving Mr. Kien's house that afternoon, Linh stood for a moment in the yard, looking at dozens of clocks hanging on the walls of the house, each hour hand stopped at a different time. She asked him why he kept so many broken watches. Mr. Kien smiled sadly, saying each clock stopped at the exact moment it stopped working, and he liked the feeling of standing in the middle of many dead timelines, because that way he wouldn't have to face the only moment he wished he could go back to: the night of rising tides, when he chose silence instead of speaking up.

That answer haunted Linh all the way home, to the point that she told Minh when they stopped the car on the side of the road to fix the tire. Minh didn't comment right away, just continued to turn each screw on the wheel, then after a while said that perhaps each person in this story was keeping their own broken watch, stopping at a moment they wished they could fix. He looked at Linh and said that for him, that was the moment he stood outside the meeting room when he was seventeen years old, listening to her father arguing with Phuc but not daring to go in.

Linh was silent, her hands tightening her shirt. She realized she also had a watch like that: the moment her mother took her hand in the car to leave An Binh, when she was too young to understand what was going on but old enough to forever remember the feeling of being pulled away from a place where she hadn't had time to say goodbye. She didn't say it out loud, but when Minh finished fixing the wheel and stood up to brush his hands off, she just quietly held his arm for a moment, as a way of saying that she understood, even though there was no need for any further explanation between the two of them.